"You know I rented and occupied a place in Yonkers last summer. It was situated on the high lands to the north of the city, a little this side of Greystone, overlooking that magnificent stream, the Hudson, the ever-varying beauties of which so few of the residents along its banks really appreciate. It was a comfortable spot, with a few trees about it, a decent-sized garden—large enough to raise a tomato or two for a Sunday-night salad—and a lawn which was a cure for sore eyes, its soft, sheeny surface affording a most restful object upon which to feast the tired optic. I believe it was that lawn that first attracted me as I drove by the place with a patient I had in tow. It was just after a heavy shower, and the sun breaking through the clouds and lighting up the rain-soaked grass gave to it a glistening golden greenness that to my eyes was one of the most beautiful and soul-satisfying bits of color I had seen in a long time. 'Oh, for a summer of that!' I said to myself, little thinking that the beginning of a summer thereof was to fall to my lot before many days—for on May 1st I signed papers which made me to all intents and purposes proprietor of the place for the ensuing six months.
"At one corner of the grounds stood, I should say, a dozen apple-trees, the spreading branches of which seemed to form a roof for a sort of enchanted bower, in which, you may be sure, I passed many of my leisure hours, swinging idly in a hammock, the cool breezes from the Hudson, concerning which so many people are sceptical, but which nevertheless exist, bringing delight to the ear and nostril as well as to the 'fevered brow,' which is so fashionable in the neighborhood of New York in the summer, making the leaves rustle in a tuneful sort of fashion, and laden heavily with the sweet odors of many a garden close over which they passed before they got to me."
"Put that in rhyme, doctor, and there's your poem," said the lieutenant, as he made a combination scratch involving every ball on the table.
"I'll do it," said the doctor; "and then I'll have it printed as Appendix J to the third edition of my work on Sixty Astigmatisms, and How to Acquire Them. But to get back to my story," he continued. "I was lying there in my hammock one afternoon trying to take a census of the butterflies in sight, when I thought I heard some one back of me call me by name. Instantly the butterfly census was forgotten, and I was on the alert; but—whether there was something the matter with my eyes or not, I do not know—despite all my alertness, there wasn't a soul in sight that I could see. Of course, I was slightly mystified at first, and then I attributed the interruption either to imagination or to some passer-by, whose voice, wafted on the breeze, might have reached my ears. I threw myself back into the hammock once more, and was just about dozing off to the lullaby sung by a bee to the accompaniment of the rustling leaves, when I again heard my name distinctly spoken.
"This time there was no mistake about it, for as I sprang to my feet and looked about, I saw coming towards me a man of unpleasantly cadaverous aspect, whose years, I should judge, were at least eighty in number. His beard was so long and scant that, to keep the breezes from blowing it about to his discomfort, he had tucked the ends of it into his vest pocket; his eyes, black as coals, were piercing as gimlets, their sharpness equalled by nothing that I had ever seen, excepting perhaps the point of this same person's nose, which was long and thin, suggesting a razor with a bowie point; his slight body was clad in sombre garb, and at first glance he appeared to me so disquietingly like a visitor from the supernatural world that I shuddered; but when he spoke, his voice was all gentleness, and whatever of fear I had experienced was in a moment dissipated.
"'You are Doctor Carey?' he said, in a timid sort of fashion.
"'Yes,' I replied; 'I am. What can I do for you?'
"'The distinguished oculist?' he added, as if not hearing my question.
"'Well, I'm a sort of notorious eye-doctor,' I answered, my well-known modesty preventing my entire acquiescence in his manner of putting it.
"He smiled pleasantly as I said this, and then drew out of his coat-tail pocket a small tin box, which, until he opened it, I supposed contained a drinking-cup—one of those folding tin cups.